Privacy Policy

Social Ventures Australia Limited (SVA), is committed to protecting your privacy. This policy outlines how we collect, use and handle your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. It also contains information on what to do if you have questions, concerns or complaints.

We take reasonable steps to ensure your personal information is protected from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

We review our Privacy Policy periodically to ensure it is up to date so we encourage you to revisit it from time to time. This policy was last updated in December 2021.

Scope

This Policy applies to all our staff, volunteers, contractors and suppliers who handle personal information collected by SVA and its related entities and collaborators (we, us, our). It applies to personal information for individuals that are external to us such as donors, clients and suppliers (you, your).

By providing your personal information to us, you consent to the use, storage and disclosure of the personal information you provide to us as described in this Policy.

Information collection

In the course of our activities, SVA collects a range of personal information about our supporters, investors, clients, subscribers, visitors to our website and other people with whom we interact.

We will only collect information about you that is reasonably necessary for our functions or activities. This may include:

your name, address and contact details
your organisation and position title
your payment and financial details and information about any previous interactions you may have had with us
information associated with web browsing, email, text messaging, phone calls or other electronic international with you including your phone number and username
for donors, details relating to your donations and information relevant to the purpose of better identifying donor sources
for others, other information relevant to the purpose of providing services to you
sensitive information about you that may include your gender, age, date of birth, health, disability, mental health, racial or ethnic origin, religious affiliation and other particulars required as part of our funding obligations and/or that are relevant for the proper provision of services that we provide
survey and questionnaire responses.

The main way we collect information is when you give it to us, for example, when you make an inquiry on our website, subscribe to our website, make a donation, invest in a fund that we manage, apply for our services, provide feedback on our website or subscribe to our updates. We may also collect information from other sources, for example, your adviser(s), publicly available records, databases or social media. However, where possible, personal information is collected directly from you with your consent at the time of your interaction with us.

Personal information may be collected in hard copy form or electronic form. Hard copy records are required to be held securely. We hold electronic records in databases with security safeguards.

Where consent to collection is sought, it is sought voluntarily from you and we will inform you of what you are consenting to. Our consent agreements are current and specific to the services to be provided to you.

We will not collect sensitive information about you, unless you have consented, it is required by law, or in other special specified circumstances.

Web Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to collect data about your interaction with our website. The sole purpose of collecting your data in this way is to improve your experience when using our site. The types of data we collect with these tools include coarse geo-location data, referring domain and out link if applicable, search terms and pages visited on our website, data and time when pages were accessed on our website. Further information on Google Analytics tracking is available from the Google website.

Cookies

We use cookies on our website which are small files transferred to and stored on your computer that enable our site to recognise your browser and record information about your use of the site. These help SVA understand what parts of the site users find the most useful and improve the effectiveness of the website. The cookies do not personally identify you, only your browser, and they do not read the information on your hard drive or make your computer perform any actions or send information to any other computer via the internet.

Generally, we do not collect sensitive information – such as information about race, religious beliefs or health – about you unless required by law or where you consent for us to do so. We may collect information about your affiliation with certain organisations, such as professional associations.

To learn more about managing your cookie and browser settings, or how to remove cookies from your hard drive, kindly visit https://www.aboutcookies.org/.

Embedded Videos

Embedded videos on our website use You Tube’s Privacy Enhanced Mode. When you play an embedded video from our website, the video and associated assets will load from the domain www.youtube-nocookie.com, and other domains associated with Google’s YouTube player. If the domain www.youtube-nocookie.com, is blocked, a local version of the video will be played instead, if available. The only data we collect about this is whether you received the You Tube version or the local version. You can access the privacy policy for YouTube on its website.

Embedded Podcasts

Embedded podcasts on our website are provided by a third-party service, SoundCloud. Information relating to SoundCloud’s use of cookies and similar technologies is set out in the SoundCloud privacy policy on their website.

Mailing List

We will collect information that you provide to us when signing up to mailing lists to obtain updates regarding the platform or for us to seek feedback from you regarding the platform, registering for our events, or submitting feedback on your experience with our website.

We use a Campaign Monitor to manage our mailing list. You can access Campaign Monitor’s Privacy Policy here. When subscribing to our mailing list, you will be asked to give your express consent that Campaign Monitor may use your data for analytics purposes. Analytics are performed when you click on links in the email, or when you download the images in the email. They include which emails you open, which links you click, your mail client, if your action occurred on mobile or desktop and the country geolocation of your IP address.

Anonymity

Where possible, we will allow you to interact with us anonymously or use a pseudonym. For example, if you contact us with a general question, we will not ask for your name unless we need it to adequately handle your question. However, for most of our functions and activities we usually need your name and contact information and enough information about the particular matter to enable us to fairly and efficiently handle your inquiry, request or complaint.

Use and disclosure of information

SVA only collects personal information that is reasonably necessary for our work and helps us engage with you. We collect, hold and use personal information only for the primary purposes for which it was collected or as set out below including:

to provide services which may include managing your support, responding to your requests, comments and questions
to process your donation or investment
to conduct marketing and social functions including but not limited to keeping you up-to-date with other initiatives or opportunities that we may think may interest you
to comply with the requirements of funding bodies as part of a funding agreement with us
to operate fundraising and charitable activity in support of our objectives
to undertake marketing, fundraising and promotional activities, including activities to better identify donor sources, events and conferences organised and held by us
to provide customer service functions, including handling enquiries, complaints and feedback
to facilitate proper governance processes such as risk management, incident management, internal audit and external audits
to gather feedback from you and other individuals about the quality of the services that we provide so that the services we provide can be continuously improved
to understand, through aggregated information, trends and patterns which we use for research and advocacy
to satisfy legal obligations, comply with applicable laws and meet the requirements of bodies which regulate the services we provide
to fulfil other purposes which you have consented to.

SVA may share personal information within the SVA group, and we may disclose the information to service providers who provide services to us in connection with our activities. We will not sell, loan or provide your information to any third party for the purpose of direct marketing without your consent.

We will not disclose your personal information to other external organisation except:

as required by funding agreements
as required by law
for transfer to another service provider in accordance with funding agreements
where we have your consent to do so through your acceptance of this policy and the disclosure relates to the goods or services we provide to you
for a purpose permitted by this policy
if you request us to do so.

Examples of organisations and/or third parties that your personal information may be provided to include:

secure payment gateways, secure data storage providers, research agencies and mail distribution providers that send our communications
a government agency, as required by our funding agreements
third party service providers who assist us with the delivery of services or who provide services to or partner with us to enable us to deliver services, or in undertaking quality assurance of our services
third party service providers who assist us with fundraising activities or strategy, identifying donor sources or analysis of our fundraising activities, strategy or patterns (including data collectives)
third parties who assist us with co-ordination of advocacy, volunteers or community activities
government or non-government agencies where we have a reasonable concern regarding your safety or wellbeing
third parties who collate and/or analyse information for the purposes of research and advocacy
third parties for the electronic storage of information, some of which may be overseas.

In limited circumstances, we may use service providers based overseas to process the data that we collect, but will only do so if we reasonably believe that the overseas entity is subject to the same or similar privacy laws to those in Australia, or if you have consented to us disclosing your personal information to the overseas entity.

We may disclose information to third parties but we will only do so with your prior consent or to comply with our legal obligations if required by a Court/Tribunal, or for co-operating with a regulator, authority or a government department.

Storage and security of information

We keep personal information in physical and/or electronic records, at our premises and the premises of our service providers, which may include cloud-based data hosting facilities which may result in your personal information provided to us being transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside Australia including but not limited to the United States of America.

You are taken to expressly agree and consent to the transfer, storing or processing of your personal information outside of Australia in submitting it to us. In providing consent, you understand and acknowledge that countries outside Australia do not always have the same privacy protection requirements as Australia in relation to personal information. Whilst we seek to ensure through our contracts with external parties that they comply with the Privacy Act regarding the use of your personal information, we have limited control around how some external parties use your personal information.

This website, h ttps://www.socialventures.org.au, is hosted in Australia.

The security of your personal information is important to us and we actively seek to ensure that all personal information we collect is protected from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. This is done by using SSL encryption, firewalls, password access and secure servers, and all donations and/or communications made online via our website are secure.

When we no longer need your personal information and we are not required to keep it to comply with any laws, we will take reasonable steps to ensure the information is destroyed or de-identified.

Third Party Websites and Platforms

This website may contain links to other websites operated by third parties. We make no representations or warranties in relation to the privacy practices of any third party website and we are not responsible for the privacy policies or the content of any third party website. Third party websites are responsible for informing you about their own privacy practices.

We use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to facilitate our business activities and functions and post about our services and other information about our events and activities. If you choose to interact with us through these services, it is your responsibility to review and accept the privacy policy of that service prior to interacting with us.

Accessing or correcting your information

We strive to make sure your personal information that we hold is accurate, up-to-date, complete and relevant. You can request access to your personal information, and update or correct the information we hold about you, by clicking ‘Preference Centre’ on any email you receive from us.

Opt-out

If you do not wish to receive marketing or promotion communications from us, you should ‘unsubscribe’ online where a link is provided. In other circumstances, you should contact us on the email addresses below and we will cease the relevant marketing or promotional communication:

[email protected]

Where we are providing services to you, we need to be able to communicate with you in relation to those services.

Mandatory Notifiable Data Breaches

We will comply with the notification and other requirements of the Privacy Act where your personal information held by us has been inadvertently lost or disclosed or improperly accessed and that loss, disclosure or access may result in serious harm to you.

Enquiries and complaints

If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about how we handle or manage your personal information, please email us at [email protected] or call us on +61 2 8004 6700. If you have made a complaint, SVA will acknowledge that your enquiry or complaint has been received, let you know who will be handling your matter and give you an estimate of when we can provide a response.

We will treat your enquiry or complaint confidentially. You may contact the Australian Information Commissioner wherever you believe that your rights to privacy have been breached by us.